Early Ancient Greece

Geographic Considerations

•Balkan Peninsula = Greece

•Aegean Sea = Main waterway

•¾ of Balkan Peninsula covered by Mountains

•Little farmland = Sea Trade

•Overpopulation = Colonization

•Greece developed small independent city-states surrounding mountains = polis

•Each polis shared language & religion

•Mountain fortress in center of polis = acropolis

Minoan Civilization

•Habitation on the island of Crete stretches back to 3000-2500 BCE

–During this time we see lots of villages along the coast

•Around 500 yrs later great palaces begin to appear

–thepalace at Knossos is the grandest found

•Minoan Culture

–The palaces has pipes, drains, and bathing facilities that are not seen again until Rome

–They are also the first to cultivate the grape and olive in the region-> major crop advantage over the geographic challenges of the region

–Taurokatharpsia-> bull leaping

–Religion could have been focused on the interaction of man and the natural world -> this act showed man winning

–Linear A-> their writing which we have never translated

Mycenaean Civilization

•Minoan culture drops off the map circa 1500-1400 BCE

–Probably due to natural disaster and the arrival of the Mycenaeans

•These Greeks lived on the mainland of Greece and were more militaristic than their fellows

•Linear B-> their written language that we have translated

•Trojan War

•Most historians place the war during this period (1500-1100 BCE)

•Ancient Greeks assumed that the war occurred

–Families traced their descent from the heroes of the war

–First in a long line of conflicts between Greece and Asia (Persia)

–Romans will see their ancestors coming from Troy-> Aeneas

•Julius Caesar will trace his lineage to this prince

–Following the Renaissance this belief fell off

•General location of Troy-> northwest Turkey near the Hellespont

–accepted by all

–Greek settlers had moved in in 700 BCE and created the colony of Ilion at Hisarlik

–Both Xerxes and Alexander the Great visited and venerated this site

•This site was inhabited until 1400 CE and then abandoned

•Heinrich Schliemann

–Self taught German archeologist

–Found remains that dated to between 3000 and 1100 BCE-> Troy was supposedly sacked in 1184 BCE

–The methods that he used were highly destruction-> just dug a ditch straight through the middle to get to the bottom

–He also smuggled many of the artifacts that he found out of Turkey-> this is after promising to turn them over to the government

•Treasure of Priam-> richest of the finds that were found, but about 1,000 years to old to be Priam’s

–One of the first to pay attention to the age of pottery shards and use these to date other finds

–Also worked in Mycenae

•This place had never been forgotten

•Here he uncovered how great this place had been

•Gold Mask of Agamemnon-> another find that is too old to be from its owner by a couple hundred years

Greek Ancestors

•Dorians

–Filter into the areas that will become Sparta and Argos

•Ionians

–Settled into Athens and colonize across the Aegean

•These folks basically take Greece into the Dark Ages where advanced culture disappears

Intro to Greek Mythology

•In the beginning. . .

–Out of the gaping, chaotic abyss emerged Erebus (Tartarus) the underworld, Eros the love, and Gaia the earth

–Uranus the sky will eventually become the consort of Gaia and they produce the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hekatonkheires

–Uranus banishes the Cyclopes and the Hekatonkheires to Tartarus

–Gaia fashions a sickle and gives it to Cronus, who castrates his father and takes control

–Cronus settles down with Rhea and their children become the major Olympian deities

–Under Cronus’s rule there is a Golden Age for the first race of humans

–“[Men] lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief. ... When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things. ... They dwelt in ease and peace.” Hesiod

–Cronus does not want to see the same thing happen to him so he eats his kids

–Zeus is born last and his mother Rhea tricked his father into thinking he had eaten him

–The same thing happens as before and Zeus becomes the ruler of the Olympian Gods

•The Olympian Gods

–Zeus: King of the Gods; god of weather and kingship

–Poseidon: God of the Seas. Earthquakes, and horses

–Hades: God of the Underworld and the dead

–Hera: Queen of the Gods; goddess of marriage

–Aphrodite: Goddess of love and beauty

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